Maryland mother shares message after her deportation to Vietnam: "My heart aches"

Melissa Tran shared a message with her community a week after the Department of Homeland Security deported the Hagerstown, Maryland mother of four to Vietnam, a country she left decades ago as a child. 

Tran was in the United States legally, but the Trump administration deported her over a theft conviction decades ago in Virginia.

Her troubles started earlier this year during a routine check-in with immigration officials in Baltimore. 

Melissa Tran's letter 

Tran wrote in her letter, posted to the Bring Melissa Home Facebook page, about the pain of the deportation.

"In my most sorrow, desperate, loneliest moments, knowing that my departure from the U.S. is imminent, I cried and asked God for his guidance," Tran wrote. 

Tran wrote that she is now struggling to adjust to life in Vietnam without her husband and children.

She said she is "very saddened and heartbroken that I had to leave the country I have called home for the last 32 years."

The Facebook group posted the first picture of Tran since she returned to Vietnam after a harrowing series of flights over two days.

Tran and other deportees were shackled the entire time, her lawyer said. 

In her letter, Tran described the trip as "very long and exhausting, but I am now free and no longer have to live in fear of check-ins" with immigration.

She wrote, "I feel very lonely here. Every second, my heart aches because I miss Danny and the kids terribly." 

Her husband, Danny Hoang, an American citizen, spoke to WJZ exclusively last week.

"It's unfair for Melissa. Unfair for my family. She's not a criminal. She's not a murderer. She is a good person," Hoang told WJZ Investigates from their Hagerstown salon. 

Tran wrote about a book shared with her while waiting to depart from Louisiana.

"Then, as I was reading the page, there was a scripture passage from the book of Jeremiah 29:11, 'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a future and a hope.' Suddenly, I felt the peace overcome me. God had spoken to me. I am no longer afraid of what [lies] ahead," Tran said.

She said she has leaned into her faith.

"I don't know what my future will be, but I put all my hope and faith in God," she said.

Tran ended her letter by writing, "I am very sorry if I've offended or hurt anyone. I'll forever cherish all the memories I had shared with you all. Hopefully, one day we'll meet again. Please continue to pray for my family, for my children, now that they have to learn to live without me. For Danny, he now has to be both of father and a mother. And for me, to have the strength to learn to embrace the new chapter of my life."

Tran's supporters said she will likely have access to a laptop next week and can begin writing directly to her supporters. 

Limited legal pathways to return 

Jennie Pasquarella, with the Seattle Clemency Project, is Tran's attorney and successfully gained her release earlier this year from a detention center in Seattle. 

But with Tran now in Vietnam, Pasquarella said it will be harder to get her back. 

"My heart has broken for her and her family. I hope there is a positive way forward for her and her children," Pasquarella said. "It makes me, as a lawyer working these cases, wonder what it will take for our country to wake up and see what is happening around the country to so many people, so many families who are being kidnapped and banished from their lives here and their families."

One avenue may be working with incoming Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger to get Tran a pardon on the theft conviction that allowed the government to deport her.

"It allowed the government to enforce a deportation order that's basically been dormant all of these years, decades, and that's just unfair," Pasquarella said. 

But she is holding out hope. 

"We hope that there's still a chance that we could reopen her immigration case and get her removal order vacated, which means her green card would be restored, but to get there is very difficult," Pasquarella said. "In Virginia, there are very limited pathways to challenging the constitutionality of an old conviction."

Tran, a refugee, was allowed to stay following her conviction because Vietnam refused to issue her travel documents. That changed under pressure from the Trump administration. 

"Here you have a woman who was beloved by her community, started a small business," Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen said. "And I have to ask everybody, 'Is she really the worst of the worst? Do people really feel safer now that Melissa Tran has been deported? I don't think so."

The Department of Homeland Security told WJZ, "An immigration judge issued her a final order of removal in 2004. She had over 20 years to leave and received full due process. President Trump and Secretary Noem's message is clear: criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the United States."